


Resolute

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Cocaine, Community: holmes_minor, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 04:52:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9419558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: The word has several meanings.





	

“Resolution” is a peculiar word; as with so many members of the English vocabulary, it has a number of completely different definitions. 

It took two kinds to remove the cocaine addiction from my blood. 

The first one was in the vow I made a few days after that dreadful Christmas day when Watson had returned from his midday walk to find me slumped by the fire and nearly insensate from the drug. That had ended in him roaring at me that I would either quit myself of “that loathsome syringe” or I would have the pleasure of the run of all the rooms at 221b starting at the New Year. That day I learned that there was indeed one prospect that was more frightening and painful to contemplate than a life without the stimulation of cocaine. So three days before year’s end, I made a vow.

The next six months of that year are painful memories. The first two weeks were marked by bouts of sleepless nights, anxiety, a craving I could no longer feed; fever, sweats, rage – and hurling invective at the people who least deserved it. The long weeks of poor sleep, troubling dreams, and constant craving were followed by a descent into utter ennui that I thought would sink me. 

Through it all Watson never deserted me, though I gave him a thousand reasons to do so. He met my cruel belittlement with cold obstinacy, my vitriol with vitriol of his own – and my rage with the boxing skills he had honed in the Army. “I shan’t apologise,” he said coolly when I glared at him from my unblackened eye in the bed where I had come back to my senses. “Now perhaps you’ll listen to reason. Some fool of an earl has lost his mother’s brooch and you will find it for him.” (I had been taking every case no matter how trivial, commonplace or uninteresting merely to have something else upon which to focus other than the drug.) 

My gradual ascent from my lethargy and hopelessness did not truly begin until the middle of August. But food regained its savour, I slept deeply and dreamed pleasant dreams and awoke refreshed and alert, and I once more sought challenging cases. Watson said nothing, but I nearly basked in the glow of pleasure he emitted whenever he looked at the eloquent dust that gathered on my morocco case. 

Watson credits my steadfastness and my refusal to turn away from my goal for the success of this venture. I maintain that it took two men to defeat this addiction, and that Watson's resolution matched my own.

**Author's Note:**

> Created for the Holmes Minor January 2017 prompt: **Resolution**. An expansion of a paragraph in [this December 2016 offering](http://archiveofourown.org/chapters/20425951).


End file.
